'Come on,' I said, smiling at him. 'We've dared much worse than this.'
The path that gave upon the Kel Road, when we finally found it, proved to be not nearly as bad as Maram had feared. True, it was unpaved and quite steep, leading up and over the side of a small mountain. But there were few rocks to turn the horses'
hooves, and tile path was quite clear. It took us through a swath of evergreens dusted in white and gleaming in the moonlight. Soon enough the road began its descent through some elms and oaks mostly bare of leaves; by the time the sky ahead of us began growing lighter, the quiet woods through which we rode were covered with only a couple of inches of snow.
I guessed that the confluence of the two Raaswash rivers lay only four or five miles from here. We rode quickly over ground that gradually fell off toward the northeast, our direction of travel. As we lost elevation, the trees around us showed many more leaves. The rising sun was just beginning to melt the snow from them. The woods around us rang with the patter of falling water, like rain. And from ahead of us came a deeper, more troubling sound: the booming of war drums shaking the air and calling men to battle.
At last we crested a small hill, and through a break in the trees we saw the armies of Ishka and Mesh spread out below us. The clear morning sun cast a great glimmer upon ranks of shields, spears and polished steel helms. The Upper Raaswash was to our left; the Ishkan lines - perhaps twelve thousand men - were drawn up about five hundred yards to the south of it. They ran along the river, from the base of our hill to the Lower Raaswash, which joined the Upper about a mile farther on to the east.
There King Hadaru had anchored his left flank, which were all warriors on foot against these bright waters. He himself had gathered the knights of his cavalry to him on his right flank at the base of our hill. I sensed that Salmelu, Lord Issur and Lord Nadhru were there sitting on top of their snorting and stamping mounts as they awaited the command to charge. I counted nearly seven hundred knights around them, all looking toward the standard of the white bear that fluttered near King Hadaru.
Facing them across the snow-covered ground were the lines of the ten thousand warriors and knights of Mesh. A mile away, by the Lower Raaswash, two hundred Meshian knights on horse were massed to the right of the foot warriors. I knew that Asaru would be there leading them, and perhaps Karshur and one or two of my other brothers as well. Although my father always made good use of terrain, he didn't believe in relying upon rivers, hills or suchlike for protecting his flanks. It gave men, he always said, a false sense of security and weakened their will to fight. And my father's will toward fighting, I knew, was very strong. Having tried to avoid this battle with all his wiles and good sense, now that he had finally taken the field against the lshkans, I pitied any knight or warrior who dared to cross swords with him.
He sat on top of a great chestnut stallion with five hundred knights on their horses at the base of our hill, off toward our right. I couldn't make out his countenance from this distance, but his flapping standard of the swan and stars was clear enough as was the white swan plume that graced his helm. I made out the blazons of the Lords Tomavar, Tanu and Avijan nearby him, and of course, the gold field and blue rose of his seneschal. Lord Lansar Raasharu. Much to Maram's chagrin, Lord Harsha had taken a post just to their right. It seemed that he was not too old for war, after all.
Maram, Master Juwain and I had only a few moments to drink in this splendid and terrible sight before a signal was given and the trumpeters up and down the Meshian lines sounded the attack. Now the drummers ahead of the lines beat out a quicker cadence in a great booming thunder as ten thousand men began marching forward.
Their long, black hair, tied with brighdy colored battle ribbons won in other contests, flowed out from beneath their helms and streamed out behind them.
Around their ankles they wore silver bells which sounded the jangling rhythm of their carefully measured steps. This high-pitched ringing had been known to unnerve whole armies and put them to flight before a single arrow was fired or spear clashed against shield. But our enemy that day were Ishkans, and they sported silver bells of their own, as did all the Valari in battle. And every man on the field, Ishkan or Meshian, warrior or king, was dressed in a suit of the marvelous Valari battle armor: supple black leather encrusted with white diamonds across the chest and back, covering the neck, and gleaming along the arms and legs down to the diamond-studded boots.
The brilliance of so many thousands of men, each sparkling with a covering of thousands of diamonds, dazzled the eye. Who had ever seen so many diamonds displayed in one place? The wealth of the Morning Mountains was spread out on the snowy field below us - and not just her gemstones. For it was men, I thought, and the women who would grieve for them, who were the true treasure of this land.
Warriors such as Asaru, pure of heart and noble-souled, born of the fertilest and finest soil - these were the only diamonds that had true worth. And they mustn't, I knew, be squandered.
'Come on!' I said to Maram and Master Juwain. I urged Altaru forward down the hill.
'It's nearly too late.'
Already, on the battlefield ahead of us through the trees, the archers behind the opposing lines were loosing their arrows. The whine of these hundreds of shafts shivered the air; their points clacked off armor in a cacophony of steel striking stone.
Soon enough, some of these arrows would drive through the chinks between the diamonds and find their way into flesh.
I rode hard for the edge of the woods and the quickly narrowing gap between the two advancing armies. Maram, clinging to his bounding horse, somehow managed to catch up to me. He pointed through the trees off to the right, towards my father's standard and his cavalry. And he gasped out, 'Your lines are that way! What are you trying to do?' 'Stop a battle,' I said.
And with that I drew forth the Lightstone and charged out onto the field. I held it high above my head. The sun filled the cup with its radiance, and it gave back this splendor a thousandfold. A sudden blaze poured out of it, drenching the warriors of both armies in a brilliant golden sheen. More than twenty thousand pairs of eyes turned my way. With Maram to my right, and Master Juwain to my left, we rode straight past the lines of men to either side of us as down a road. Thus did Lord Harsha's prediction come true as we found ourselves in the middle of the battlefield in front of both advancing armies.
'Hold!' I cried out to the warriors around me as Altaru galloped through the snow.
'Hold now!'
An arrow, shot from behind the Ishkans' ranks, whistled past my ear. Then I heard one of the Ishkans shout, 'It's the Elahad - back from the dead!'
Many men were now giving voice to their amazement. I recog nized Lord Harsha's gruff old voice booming out above others of the knights grouped around my father,
'They've returned! The questers have returned! The Lightstone has been found!'
Suddenly the trumpets stopped blowing and the drums fell silent. The captains calling out the cadences up and down the lines gave the order for a halt. The silver bells bound around the warriors' legs ceased their eerie jingling as the twenty thousand men along the Ishkan and Meshian lines drew up waiting to see what their kings would next command.
I stopped Altaru at the middle of the field. Master Juwain and Maram joined me there. The Lightstone was now like the sun itself in my hand. It was a call for a truce, the like of which hadn't been seen among the Valari for three thousand years.
My father, along with Lansar Raasharu, Lord Tomavar, Lord Harsha and several other lords and master knights, was the first to ride toward us beneath a fluttering white flag. A few moments later, King Hadaru gathered up his most trusted lords and called for one of his squires to hold up a white flag as well. Then he, too, led his men slowly toward us. It was not quite the thundering charge that either the Meshian knights or the Ishkans had anticipated.
'Stop the battle, you said!' Maram muttered at me, holding his hand to his chest.
'Stop my heart, I say!'
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My father had signaled for Asaru to join the parlay; now he broke from the ranks to the east down by the river and urged his dark brown stallion across the field. It took him only a few minutes to canter across the half mile that separated us. As he drew closer and the Lightstone's radiance showed the long, hawk's nose and the noble face that I had nearly given up hope of seeing again, my heart soared and tears filled my eyes.
Then my father, who had drawn up with his lords in a half circle around Master Juwain, Maram and me, called out my name, and his voice touched my soul, 'Sar Valashu, my son - you have returned to us. And not with empty hands.'
He sat straight and grave in his sparkling armor as he regarded the Lightstone with marvel and me even more so. We were like new men to each other. His black eyes, so like Kane's in their brilliance, found mine, and embraced my entire being with gladness and love. In his fierce gaze burned a certainty that he had not lived his life in vain.
As King Hadaru and the Ishkans formed up on the other side of me facing him, my father studied my torn cloak and nearly ragged surcoat.
Then he asked me, 'Where is the shield that I gave you when you set out on your journey?'
'Gone, Sire,' I told him. 'Consumed in dragon fire.'
At this, even the greatest lords of both Ishka and Mesh gasped out their amazement as if they were still unbloodied boys. They all pressed closer. No one seemed to know if what I had said should be taken literally.
'Dragon fire, is it? King Hadaru said. He sat all bearlike and irritable on top of his huge horse as he looked at me skeptically. His great beak of a nose pointed straight at me as if threatening to pry out the truth. 'And where did you fight this dragon?'
'In Argttha,' I said.
This name, dreadful and ancient, loosed in the lords another round gasps and cries.
All their eyes now lifted up and fixed on the golden cup still pouring forth its fight from above my hand. 'It was in Argattha,' Maram said, 'that we found the Lightstone.' Prince Salmelu nudging his horse closer to his father, held his hand covering his eyes as he shook his head. The scar running down the side of his race to his weak chin burned a goldish red. Then he tore his gaze from the Lightstone.
His cold, dark eyes fell upon me in challenge. He looked at me with a great hate that had only grown in poisonousness during the months since I had wounded him in our duel.
'Is it your claim, then,' he said to me in a bitter voice, that this is the Lightstone?'
'There's no claim to me made,' I told him. 'It is, as you can see, the cup that our ancestors brought to earth.'
He pressed his horse a few paces forward as if to get a better look at the cup that I held. His ugly, furtive eyes showed but little of its light. 'And you claim to have entered the forbidden city and brought forth this cup?' Salmelu asked me.
'In fulfillment of our quest yes,' I said to him.
'What proofs can you give us, then?' he called out to me. 'Why should we believe the word of a man who has dishonored himself in fighting duels that he didn't have the courage to finish?'
Despite my resolve to keep a cool head, I suddenly found myself gripping Alkaladur's hilt. And Salmelu moving slightly more slowly due to the wounds I had cut into his arms and chest, curled his fingers around his kalama.
'Val,' Master Juwain reminded me with an urgent whisper, 'If you truly wish to stop this battle, this is no place for pride.' 'Perhaps not pride,' I .told him, 'but certainly honor.' Then I fought to turn away from the ever-beckoning and burning black pool of hatred that would conume me if I let it, my father's clear voke rang out. 'Sar Valaahu, on this day no knight on all of Ea has more honor than you.'
His words washed through me like a thrill of cold water. I suddenly let go of my sword. But my father's praise only inflamed Salmelu and deepened his spite. And so, before two kings and the assembled lords of Ishka and Mesh with the thousands of warriors of two armies waiting in their lines and looking on, he sneered at me, saying,
'And still you lack the courage to test whether the swordstroke that cut me so dishonorably was skill or only evil luck!'
I took a deep breath and said, 'We haven't journeyed to the end of Ea and returned here today to make more tests - only to tell of what we've seen.'
I informed the assembled lords then of the battle for Surrapam and the conquest of Yarkona by Count Ulanu and his dreadful Blues. I spoke of the armed might that Morjin was assembling behind the rocky shield of Skartaru. And then I called for a peace between Ishka and Mesh. I said that the Valari must now join together and renounce our petty squabbles, duels and formal combats. For someday Morjin would recover from the wound that I had dealt him. And someday we would have to fight a war without rules or mercy, a terrible war to determine the fate of the world -
and perhaps much else.
'A great scryer named Atara Ars Narmada has told that we can die bravely as Ishkans and Meshians,' I called out. 'Or live as Valari.'
Salmelu nudged his horse a step closer as he pointed at the Lightstone. He said,
'And still Sar Valashu will say anything to avoid battle. How should we believe anything of what he has told us? How do we know that this is really the cup of our ancestors and not just one of the False Lightstones told of in the ancient chronicles?
Or even some glowstone gilded over to fool us?'
Truly, a poisonous serpent was Salmelu. And the time had come to pull his fangs.
'Those who serve the Lord of Lies,' I said to him, 'will hear lies in the truth that others tell.'
As Salmelu froze in a hateful stare, all the Ishkan lords except King Hadaru grabbed at the hilts of their swords. He sat beneath the white flag held by his squire, looking at Salmelu and the others as if to remind them that we had gathered here in sacred truce. Then he turned toward me. In a deathly calm voice, he asked, 'Do you accuse my son of treachery?'
'Treachery, yes, and more,' I said. I looked straight into Salmelu's black, boiling eyes. 'It was he who shot the poison arrow at me in the woods. He is an assassin, sent by the Red Dragon to -'
I had expected that Salmelu might not be able to bear the shame of his iniquity. And so I was prepared for him to whip free his sword and deliver an underhanded cut at me. But at the last moment even as he screamed and spurred his horse straight at me, I was seized within sudden premonition that if I drew forth Alkaladur to defend myself, I would touch off the very battle that I had come here to prevent. 'Damn you, Elahad!' he screamed at me again.
He aimed his kalama in a silvery flash at my hand holding the Lightstone; its razor-sharp edge easily would have cleaved off my arm. But I suddenly gripped the cup tightly and turned it into the plane of his swordstroke. The gold of the gelstei -
of the Gelstei - met cold steel in a shiver of shrieking metal. His sword shattered into pieces, and he stared down in disbelief at the hilt-shard sticking out from his spasming fist.
'Hold!' King Hadaru called out, spurring his horse forward. He motioned to Lord Issur, Lord Nadhru and Lord Mestivan. 'Hold him, now! Let it not be said that we Ishkans are trucebreakers!'
As the Ishkan lords and knights swarmed around Salmelu, grabbing at him and the reins of his horse, King Hadaru himself wrested the broken sword from his son's hand. He spat on it and cast it to the ground. Then he raised back his gauntleted hand and struck Salmelu across the face. And he raged at him, 'Trucebreaker! You have dishonored yourself in the sight of both friend and foe!'
My father, sitting on his horse between Asaru and Lord Harsha, stared at the livid welt raised up on the side of Salmelu's face. He had little liking for this man, but even less desire to see a king savage his own son.
'And you!' King Hadaru said, whirling about on top of his horse to point at me. 'You bring no honor to yourself if you cast careless words at one whom you have already wounded! He who provokes the breaking of a truce may be called a trucebreaker himself!'
'None of my words has been careless, King Hadaru,' I said. 'Your son has called for war with Mesh at the comman
d of the Red Dragon. He was to weaken your realm and my father's. His reward, after the Red Dragon had sent his armies to conquer us, was to have been the overlordship of both Mesh and Ishka - and eventually all of the Nine Kingdoms.'
'No, no,' King Hadaru said, his red face falling white with a cold, deadly wrath, 'that is not possible!'
Although I pitied him, and his pain was like a great, hard knot in my chest, I looked at him and said, 'Your son is one of the Kallimun.'
Now a terrible silence descended upon all those assembled beneath the flapping white flags and spread out like death across the battlefield. For a moment, no one dared to move.
'Who has ever heard a Valari knight speak such evil of another?' King Hadaru said, staring at me. 'How could you possibly know such a thing?'
'Because,' I said, 'one of my companions saw this in Morjin's mind.'
'Proof!' Salmelu suddenly screamed out. 'He has no proofs!'
King Hadaru pointed at him and commanded, 'Hold him!'
Lord Issur and Lord Nadhru, who had their horses pressed up close to Salmelu's, gripped his arms while Lord Mestivan dismounted and pulled him offhis horse. Then three other Ishkan lords dismounted as well, and helped Lord Mestivan subdue the furiously struggling Salmelu.
'There are proofs,' I said to King Hadaru. I gave the Lightstone to Maram to hold, then climbed down from Altaru and stepped over to Salmelu. 'Watch closely.'
I pulled out the bloodstone that Kane had given me. Its dreadful red light fell upon Salmelu's face. And there, at the center of Salmelu's forehead, was revealed a tattoo of a coiled, red dragon.
'It's the mark of the Kallimun,' I said. 'The Red Priests affix it to their own with an invisible ink. The bloodstones bring it out into view. Thus do the Red Priests know each other.'
'It's a trick!' Salmelu cried out, shaking his head back and forth. 'An evil trick of this gelstei!'
'Salmelu's murder of me,' I said, ignoring him, 'was to have been his final initiation into Morjin's priesthood.'
The Ishkan lords murmured among themselves and cast Salmelu looks of loathing.
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